


We never go out of style

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (It is a FS fic after all!), Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Break Up, F/M, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, LLF Comment Project, Miscommunication, Sci-Ops Era (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Stubborn Jemma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 11:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11690832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When she breaks up with Leopold Fitz for the first time, Jemma Simmons tells everybody who is willing to listen that they are never ever getting back together.(Can you spot the contradiction there?)Or: Fitzsimmons break up, get back together, break up again and still keep finding their way back to each other.





	We never go out of style

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt: May I ask for FitzSimmons + “It never works for us, and it never will”?
> 
> I know break-up stories are not everyone's cup of tea but maybe give this a try? Because it's not a story about falling out of love, it's a story about miscomunication and learning how to appreciate the other.

**_I should just tell you to leave_  ** **_‘cause I_ **

**_know exactly where it leads_ ** **_but I_ **

**_watch it go round and round each time_ **

* * *

It starts like this:

When she breaks up with Leopold Fitz for the first time, Jemma Simmons tells everybody who is willing to listen that they are never ever getting back together.

(Can you spot the contradiction there?)

It was just a stupid decision, really. They worked just fine as lab partners, but she had to go and give his blue eyes and his deft fingers and his dry humour a chance. And it wasn’t exactly that the chance was wasted, because she liked very much his bright eyes and his nice fingers and his stupid jokes. But he also has the uncanny ability to get under her skin, to hit all the sensitive spots that Jemma protects zealously, and, for real, _he just doesn’t know when to quit._ They make each other go hoarse with anger and each one likes too much to make the other stutter with indignation. And Jemma has so many better things to do than to lose her temper and her time with such a _child,_ honestly.  

She takes great pleasure in dumping him in the middle of the Academy Cafeteria, though, his eyes boring holes in her skull while she storms up dignified.

* * *

(She would never say it out loud, but she thinks about him sometimes, during restless nights, mostly. She thinks about his soft lips and his eyes that looked so very blue in the mornings, and remembers fondly how fast he learned how to take her apart as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

She would be lying if she said that he doesn’t propel a lot of her thoughts during lonely nights.

But she also thinks about how he used to show all his teeth whenever she said something that he liked very much, she thinks about his tongue peeking from between his lips when he is concentrated on a task, she thinks about all the nervous gestures he has when a stranger breaks into his space or his things, and about how he never showed any of them around her. She thinks about his quick mind and about how he was the first person ever that truly understood her completely.

She doesn’t regret her decision, even if it was made in a whim and out of anger. She just… wonders.)

* * *

She is wary when Fitz approaches her three months after their break-up.

“I have a proposal for you.”

She has to say that she is impressed; he has a reputation of having a temper, and if she were in his place, she would have never been the best (wo)man and reached out to him.

“What for?”

“You want to graduate early. I want to graduate early. Professor Weaver says that both our timelines are impossible unless we work with each other, because everyone else’s schedules don’t align with ours.”    

She considers it for a minute, but really, there is no actual doubt about what she is going to decide. Her future is more important than any petty quarrel, and even though they didn’t work out romantically, they worked as a well-oiled machine professionally.

She moves a place to the left to vacate a site for him, opens up her schedule notebook and uncaps her favourite glittery pen.

“Tell me about your plan. Down to the last detail.”

* * *

It’s strange getting to know better someone who already has seen her naked. She is not some kind of, of, of _serial dater_ or something, but she has had flings here and there, always with people that left her life immediately after. The perks of dating in Operations, really. Things get nasty, she breaks up with them, and if it isn’t in writing, then it never happened.  

Of course Leopold Fitz had to be the exception to that rule.

He tenses up if their fingers brush off accidentally while grabbing a part, she can’t help blushing if he catches her looking at his hands, sometimes one of them mentions something they discussed when they were “dating” and both freeze. It’s not easy.  

But it’s not that hard either.

Because despite her reservations and the awkwardness, they have always worked together seamlessly (and that played a big part in pushing Jemma into his arms, to be honest), and now is not the exception. Within two weeks, they are finishing each other’s sentences again, and Jemma has memorized his classes schedule so she can bother him with ideas for their projects whenever the need arises, and Fitz starts making tea for two without even asking first.   

* * *

(She should have known that no, it couldn’t be that easy. _You are a nubile young prodigy, Jemma, for god’s sake.)_

* * *

She should have seen it coming; in hindsight, all the dangerous ingredients were there: the celebratory drinks, and the excitement thrumming through their bodies, and the giddiness of a job well done, and Fitz in that suit and tie that made him look less like a fifteen year-old.

She has two PhDs, she should have known that it was a cocktail only meant for disaster.

(Maybe she knew, and she let it slide anyway.)

The post graduation party finds them in a closet, their clothes askew, their hairdos messed up, Jemma’s lipstick smeared all around Fitz's mouth, his hand sneaking up under her underwear.

She has a moment of clarity right before the point of no return, and she talks herself into buying that it doesn’t have to mean anything, this is just their particular brand of celebration, right?

Right.

Morning finds her restless, a mug of tea in her hands, his white shirt on her shoulders, and a very naked, very asleep Fitz on her bed.

_Well, fuck._

* * *

They don’t talk about it.

Things are in an unstable equilibrium as it is to put it at risk more than necessary; they got a work offer together, because apparently everybody thinks they are a fixed unit, and really, getting everyone to accept that is not the case plus the time it would take her to train someone into her very strict lab protocols is just not worth it.

They are both consenting adults, clearly both of them think that what happened was just the product of a spur-of-the-moment mistake. There is no need to make a fuss about it.   

* * *

It keeps on going like this:

There is no need to make a fuss about it. Except for the fact that it keeps happening.

At first it is only after they have had one too many glasses of alcohol each, or when they are too drunk on success. _(What even is_ that, _Jemma, ‘drunk on success’? You keep telling yourself whatever makes you feel better with this whole mess.)_ It’s just natural, isn’t it? They are young, they are filled to the brim with positive energy, they spend maybe too much time together, they know already what the other one looks like when fully naked. They don’t have time or patience to go out looking for a third party, so whenever they feel the need to decompress, it’s only reasonable that they keep going back to the next best thing.

Their bodies are just used to each other, there is no need to go through the inconveniences and the possible underwhelming results of trying someone new to just scratch an itch. They wake up, they get dressed, they go about life as if nothing has happened, they don’t talk about it. Rinse and repeat.

But then it starts happening when there is no plausible explanation for any type of drunkenness involved.

It starts happening when they stay too late at the lab, and Fitz walks her home and she invites him up to her home to watch a movie or maybe settle the numbers of the day. They fall asleep together in the couch and she wakes up to both the sunshine and Fitz making her ticklish by kissing her neck.

It starts happening when she has spent too much time looking at his hands at work, and the blush on her chest and ears refuses to come down with any amount of cold water or scolding thoughts, and he looks at her knowingly and they lock themselves up on a storage room to relieve, ahem, _some tension._

It starts happening because Fitz has a bad day and can’t get anything useful done in the lab with that grumpy face on, and she teases him saying that if he can complete certain task in a time schedule, she has a reward ready for him.

She tells herself that “it _starts_ happening”, but, in fact, it just happens and never stops happening.

* * *

She would tell anyone that dares to ask that _no, they are not dating, what are you even talking about,_ but she is not dumb.

She realizes that things are progressing way out of both their controls, but there is no reason to stop them, is there?  She remembers with incredible clarity that she once said that they weren’t _never ever_ getting back together, but this isn’t them getting back together, right? This is just them being lab partners, and good friends, friends who go on friend-dates together and then end up having sex, right? _Right?_

Because all the infuriating things that once went under her skin about Fitz are… still there. Like, it doesn’t matter that she now knows that he is tidy and clean when it truly matters, that his conceited ego actually masks insecurities, that he eats so much because he had a healthy childhood with a mother who fed him well, but also out of anxiety and out of simply just loving life, too. _It doesn’t matter._   

_(You keep telling yourself that, Jemma.)_

* * *

When did it happen that Leopold Fitz became the most constant person in her life, her security net, her support system? How could she _let_ that happen?

* * *

She probably should have imagined that he was going to get angry about this.

(It’s not like she did it on purpose, to hurt him. Except that she totally did.)

“You wasn’t even going to tell me that you are going into the field? And then what? What do you think it would happen?”

“I’m sorry, did I give the impression that I was asking for your opinion? Because I wasn’t. I was just informing you of my decision.”

His breathing is ragged, and his eyes look crazed. This is not good timing to be finding him this attractive, but she does. She always does.

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

“I think I have made myself absolutely clear, Fitz.”

“What is not _clear_ is your mind, Jemma! You can not be in your right mind and think that it can’t-”

“-and who gave you the right to-”

“- gonna get yourself killed or worse and-”

“-if you even cared about me, you-”

* * *

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“Oh, so now you admit _there is_ something to break up? Because you always-”

“Haven’t you heard me? If there was, it’s broken now.”

(This is how things were always destined to be between them, isn’t it? It never actually worked between them, and it never will.)

* * *

It isn’t easy, getting him out of her head.

Like, yes, again, she thinks about him in a sexual way. How could she not, after almost seven years of being dating in everything but the name?

(That’s how Skye names it when Jemma tells her about him after one too many beers. She gets outraged, of course, but in reality there is no much she can say to deny it. Damn, Simmons, alcohol is really bad for your judgement.)

She misses him, and Agent Ward’s abdominals don’t actually help as much as she hoped. She misses him in all capacities, not only to give her an orgasm after stressful days or to use him as her personal furnace.

She misses him when she gets five free minutes to read a book for pleasure and comes across a line he would love.

She misses him when Skye offers her a cup of tea, and she is trying her best, but it’s never quite right.

She misses him when she has to repeat herself for what feels like the hundredth time to her lab partner until he catches up with her.

She misses him when they come across something amazing, something dangerous, something beautiful, and she can’t help thinking _This would be more amazing, less frightening, more precious if you were by my side experiencing it._

She misses _him,_ and oh, things were never supposed to go this way, weren’t they?

* * *

(What were you expecting, Simmons? You are well acquainted with the human mind, you should have known, better than almost anybody, that one can not spend near a decade with another person without getting attached.)   

* * *

When they get to The Playground after the fall, bruised and bloody, she was expecting everything, except for him.

It makes sense, of course. He could never be Hydra, and of course he wasn’t out there in the field getting drowned by traitors, either.

(She will learn later that he had to fight his way out of The Hub tooth and nail, but there will be time for that.)

She runs into his arms as soon as she sees him, because it doesn’t matter that the last time they saw each other they parted with venom on their tongues and fire on their veins, he is here and he is alive, and his hug is the cure to the cold Jemma thought she would never be able to completely shake from her bones.

Her team looks at them with curiosity and confusion when she kisses him right there in the hangar, but, again, she almost drowned for this organization, she has earned the right to do as she well damn pleases.         

* * *

Together, they rebuild.

They are trained to fix things, and they always have been better at doing it side by side.

Everything is in shambles, everything they ever believed in is under suspicion, but that only makes one thing stark clear: they have always believed more than anything in each other.

They have spent roughly nine months apart, but so many things happened on those months that it feels like they were years instead. Jemma feels a pull towards him stronger than ever before, she goes to him for the sad moments and for the happy ones too. He is her second pair of eyes and his second pair of hands, and when Skye sits down in a lab bench after a training session to watch them work around each other, and starts calling them _Fitzsimmons,_ Jemma discovers that she has gained a new fondness for the old nickname.

They don’t talk about what happened before, though, and they don’t talk about what is happening now. Old habits die hard, after all.       

* * *

It ends like this:

It’s been six months, and things aren’t easy, but they are taking it one step at a time, doing the best they can.

They handle some things better than others, of course. For example, she handled the latest catastrophe in the lab much better than she is handling this.

Everything was going great, _of course_ Fitz had to ruin it.

Because she was doing fine as long as she didn’t have to acknowledge what is really going on between them. She could handle this while she could pretend that is something unimportant, that she didn’t let the previous years that could have been of full companionship go to waste.

She is great at pretending.

She can’t pretend anymore when Fitz is lying naked on her bed, laughing at something she just said, and then leans down to kiss her neck almost as a reflex, and murmurs against her skin:

“God, I love you so much.”

She freezes instantaneously and consequently he freezes too, but there is no question about what she needs to do.

“We are breaking up.”

(Is there something to break up when there hadn’t been no explicit arrangement?)

It sounds absurd even to her own ears, because she can not get her body to answer her, get up, get dressed and leave.

“No.”

That wasn’t the reaction she was expecting, to be honest.

“Wh-what?”

“I said no.” He looks her in the eyes, and takes her hands between his. “No, Jemma, you can’t have the easy way out this time. We are dealing with this for once and for all.”        

* * *

It starts like this:

She stays.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @florchis at tumblr, drop by to tell me what you think of this, give me a prompt or just say hi!
> 
> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Prompts
>   * Image reactions
>   * Reader-reader interaction
>   * This author replies to comments.
> 



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